VITAMIN C is thought to boost your immune system, whether you get your dosage through supplements or citrus fruits - but will it prevent coronavirus?

New York doctors are treating critically ill coronavirus sufferers with vitamin C, and scientists in Wuhan and Shanghai in China are also trialing the vitamin. Vitamin C has been used to alleviate symptoms of the flu for years. Since the symptoms of the flu are similar to the symptoms of COVID-19, it makes sense to try vitamin C against the disease.

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Can Vitamin C prevent coronavirus?

Medical health experts have said there isn't much evidence vitamin C is effective in preventing the common cold, let alone coronavirus.

Whether you stockpile vitamin C supplements or start eating oranges every day you aren't protected against the deadly disease, but it might be useful when you have contracted the virus.

Medical experts are using the vitamin in high dosage through IV to treat COVID-19 patients, and high-dose intravenous VC has also been successfully used in the treatment of at least 50 moderate to severe COVID-19 patients in China.

For example, Dr. Enqian Mao, chief of the emergency medicine department at Ruijin Hospital, a major hospital in Shanghai.

Dr. Mao has been using high-dose IVC to treat patients with acute pancreatitis, sepsis, surgical wound healing, and other medical conditions for over 10 years.

He and other experts have been using this method to treat moderate to severe cases of COVID-19.

Dr. Mao said patients who received high dose IVC had a hospital stay about 3-5 days shorter than the overall patients.

He discussed one severe case in particular who was deteriorating rapidly. He gave 50g IVC over a period of 4 hours and the patient's pulmonary status stabilized and improved as the critical care team watched in real-time.

There were no side effects reported from any of the cases treated with high dose IVC.

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Similarly, ZhiYong Peng, MD of the Department of Critical Care Medicine at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University registered a phase 2 clinical trial on ClinicalTrials.gov in March to test the efficacy of vitamin C infusions for the treatment of severe acute respiratory infection associated with the novel coronavirus.

The study description says that vitamin C is an antioxidant that may help prevent cytokine-induced damage to the lungs.

Cytokines are reportedly small proteins released by cells, which trigger inflammation and respond to infections

The description of the trial argues that vitamin C reduces the inflammatory response, and can both prevent and shortens the duration of the common cold.

It adds that insufficient vitamin C is related to an increased risk and severity of influenza (flu) infections.

In this case, ZhiYong Peng's team hopes to see vitamin C having similar powers against the viral pneumonia that can develop from COVID-19.

Eating one orange a day is more than enough to fulfil your required daily Vitamin C intake (Image: Getty)